Jessica hails from Northern Ireland, and has written thousands of guides across sites such as Eurogamer, PCGamer, IGN, and PCGamesN. She also ventures into the lands of reviews, news, interviews, and features from time to time, but never strays too far from the guides shire. When Jessica’s not writing about games, she’s usually stressing over character builds in Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact, or on the hunt for a new survival horror to test the strength of her vocal chords. She asks that you kindly stop recommending gargantuan RPGs to her, as they will become her new personality, and there’s only so much unnecessary tatt that her shelves can hold. This logic somehow doesn’t stop her from trying every new gacha RPG going, but looking at her playtime on those tends to have the same effect… sometimes.
You need to find Lapras to learn the Surf ability in Pokemon Pokopia, but even though you can get Lapras early on by making a Tropical Seaside Habitat in the Bleak Beach area, you can’t actually learn Surf until Piplup asks you to go swimming with them. And Piplup won’t ask you this until you’re far enough into the Bleak Beach storyline in Pokemon Pokopia.
How to Get Pikachu in Pokopia (Pikachu Location)
Learn how to get Pikachu in Pokemon Pokopia by building the Picnic Set habitat in Palette Town.
How to Find Lapras and Learn Surf in Pokopia
Lapras is found by making a Tropical Seaside Habitat in Pokemon Pokopia, which consists of a large palm tree, four hedges, and two squares of ocean water. However, you can’t learn the Surf ability from Lapras until you get far enough into the Bleak Beach storyline, where Piplup asks you to go swimming with them. Specifically, you need to keep playing until you build a house at Professor Tangrowth’s request, and complete enough requests for Piplup and Trubbish after that, before Piplup invites you for a dip in the ocean.
As long as you keep playing through the main storyline of Bleak Beach, you’ll eventually come across Piplup’s request to swim, so don’t worry, Surf isn’t a missable ability. All you really have to do is keep checking in with Piplup to unlock it.
We found a palm tree in the southeastern corner of the shore in Bleak Beach, and used the Rototiller ability to pick up four bloomed hedges in the Withered Wasteland and brought them to the palm tree, to create a perfect Tropical Seaside Habitat in Pokemon Pokopia. So if you’re struggling to find a place to get Lapras, you can use this spot.
Once Lapras spawns in the Tropical Seaside Habitat (it won’t take long), speak to them and then clean up 80 piles of mud in Bleak Beach to finally unlock the Surf ability in Pokopia.
You need to get a Pokemon with the Water specialty (like Piplup) to follow you in Pokopia in order to clean up the mud piles on Bleak Beach. The Pokemon bubbles the mud first, then you can use your Water Gun ability to clear the mud away.
How to Use Surf in Pokopia
Use the B button when in water to transform into an adorable-looking Lapras to use Surf in Pokopia. With Surf active, you can now explore any body of water, which makes it handy for quickly traversing the Bleak Beach area in particular. When you’re done zooming about on the water, all you have to do is press the B button again to transform back into your regular human-Ditto form — but beware, doing this in the middle of a deep body of water will sink your ditto and spawn you back on land.
- Released
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March 5, 2026
- ESRB
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Everyone / Users Interact, In-Game Purchases
